Naomi Judd memorial will air live on TV

Late country music star Naomi Judd will get a TV salute from her family and her contemporaries at the famous Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee, on Sunday.

The public memorial, “Naomi Judd: A River of Time Celebration,” will air live and commercial-free on CMT and will include tributes from her daughters, singer Wynonna and actor Ashley Judd, “to honor the extraordinary life and legacy of [the] country music icon,” the network said Wednesday in a statement.

Additional performers and details about the show will be announced over the next few days, CMT said.

The Kentucky-born singer, who was half of Grammy winners the Judds, died on April 30 at age 76, a day before the duo’s induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Her death also came mere weeks after the Judds had reunited at the 2022 CMT Awards and performed their 1990 hit “Love Can Build a Bridge.”

The duo had just announced an arena tour — their first in more than a decade — that was set to begin in the fall. The future of the tour remains unclear.

The Judds called it quits in 1991 after doctors diagnosed Naomi Judd with hepatitis. (Wynonna carried on as a solo artist.) Upon announcing Naomi Judd’s death, the family said that they lost Judd “to the disease of mental illness.”

“It wasn’t supposed to be this way,” Ashley Judd wrote in a May 6 op-ed for USA Today that addressed her mom’s mental health and “unintended pregnancy” at age 17.

“I was supposed to visit her on Sunday, to give her a box of old-fashioned candy, our family tradition. We were supposed to have sweet delight in each others’ easy presence.

Naomi Judd, one half of the Judds, died on April

30. She is shown attending the CMT Music Awards on April 11 in Nashville.

Instead, I am unmoored.”